Eligibility:
*Short speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, or science fiction) up to 20,000 words in length.
*Stories must be unpublished in either digital or print format. This includes short stories published on your own website or self-published on any retail outlet.
*Stories must be the author's own original work and not incorporate any intellectual property owned by a third-party (such as fan fiction or derivative fiction)
*Reading fee can be paid either by making a direct donation to CLI using the Firstgiving.com portal or by making a payment to us using PayPal. We prefer for entrants to support the charity directly, but how you pay the reading fee has no bearing on how your submission is judged.
*Contest period runs from February 1, 2012 to October 31, 2012. Winners will be announced January, 2013.
Format Guidelines:
*Submissions should be sent as WORD.DOC or RTF format. Do NOT send submissions in the body of an email or in formats other than specified.
*Because we may be reading your submissions on our ereaders, please do not double-space your submission. Use minimal formatting to avoid potential file corruption problems.
*Do not use the Tab key to indicate a new paragraph. This can cause issues when we try to read your work on some ereaders. Instead, use your word processing software's formatting tools to set your first line to indent automatically.
*You may submit up to three stories. Each story should be in a separate file. Do not submit all stories in a single document.
*Include your full name, address, and email address in your submission to make sure your work is properly assigned to your entry.
